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As the Double Garden event wound down and I kept taking wizards to the Bazaar to sell off the last of their harvests, I realized even those who don’t garden and don’t want to can reap some some benefits during the double reward events.

Plants routinely can drop: (1) housing items; (2) reagents; (3) treasure cards; (4) pet snacks. Many plants drop all of the above, some just drop two or three. Those of us who do a lot of gardening generally have well-filled stores of reagents, TCs, etc. When we start getting double we make a lot of trips to the Bazaar to sell things off as we keep hitting our limits.

Many treasure cards, snacks, plant-“like”-housing items and reagents that can be hard to come by at the Bazaar are suddenly being sold in copious numbers. Not only can you sometimes pick up cards, etc. that usually require a long slog at the shop, but often because more are available, the price is better.

and several of those — like Black Pearl — are much in demand for crafting. They can take a lot of farming to get enough and I sell a bunch every time I harvest. Evil Magma Peas, besides a similarly enticing list of reagents (including Scrap Iron!!!), also drop Feint and Tower Shield tcs, both of which are so sought-after the Bazaar often has none. Couch Potatoes drop a bunch of level 5, 6 and 7 snacks at regular harvests; because they drop mega snacks at elder harvest, many of us sell all the other snacks, so items like Killer Tomato and Shanta Pudding that can be not only hard to grab but pricey can be more available and lower in price.

So even if you never garden and never will, you might want to take advantage of the next Double Garden Reward event by hanging out at the Bazaar stocking up on items you usually have trouble finding. If you have particular items you want, check the wiki to see whether there are plants that drop them. If there are, make sure you haunt the Bazaar for them on Double Garden days.

I’ve seen signs during the last several Double Garden Reward events that KI is slowing down the timers and this time feels more like it than ever.

I planted Couch Potatoes and Evil Magma Peas on Wednesday, early in the evening. Normally both of those — with all likes — would have been at elder harvest Saturday. Not only did they not make it but for most of them the progress bar didn’t move from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. I even made time to check in this morning before the event got taken down and none of the Couch Potatoes made it to elder harvest.

A bunch of the CPs are close but didn’t make it and another batch is only about 3/4 complete. Some of the EMPs finally made it by late Sunday night and the rest by this morning but that’s 1 to 1-1/2 days longer than usual. And the CPs are at 2 days longer than usual and counting.

I’ve seen some comments on a Facebook group I’m in about the timers seeming to have slowed down at the last event and have run into people in the game who seem to be experiencing this slow-down too. What’s your experience? Do you think KI is slowing down the growth of plants during these events?

I’m finding the safest way to be assured of double elder harvests on crops you want is to get them there when there’s not a double rewards event happening and just leave them sitting at elder until one starts. That way you’re assured of one double elder harvest. After that it’s getting to be a crap shoot whether you can get any sort of plant–no matter how short the growing cycle–from seed to elder harvest while one of these events is happening.

Although it’s not mentioned in the latest update notes I’ve noticed this last week that most of the plants I’m growing have suddenly started dropping “liked” housing items. Specifically whatever housing item(s) that particular plant likes.

After fighting Oakheart a few hundred times to get Potted Cattails for all my wizards, now my Pink Dandelions are dropping them constantly. Not just at Elder Harvest but regularly on Mature Harvests. Evil Magma Peas throw down Egg Baskets and Djembe Drums like they’re going out of style. And after dozens of battles against the Death Oni and lots of growing Ultra Trumpet Vines to get ONE Gong of the Oni, now my Silver Trumpet Vines are dropping them like crazy — and you can’t even sell them at the Bazaar.

The plants that have Ultra Seeds have all been occasionally dropping liked housing items since Ultra Seeds began approximately a year ago, so I’d closed some gaps without the endless hours of work previously spent on collecting the items my plants like. I just never expected to have them suddenly drop as often as Black Pearls or Scrap Iron from regular (not Ultra) plants.

I must admit I have mixed feelings. After working my tail off and spending untold hours on battles, crafting projects (sometimes involving rare and hard-t0-get reagents), and trolling the Bazaar, all to collect likes for all crops and all wizards, I’m faintly miffed that newbies will just get all those things with ease. On the other hand, I’ve railed against the difficulty in getting “likes” for a long time; and especially the many likes for plants lower level wizards can grow that are only available at much higher levels.

After waiting over a year to get one Gong of the Oni every wizard now has at least one one and I’m starting to feed them to pets… ‘-) I can appreciate that ease. Apparently from here on out, as soon as you grow one crop of a plant you’ll have every like you need for the second round by the time you hit elder harvest.

Plant likes speed up the time it takes to get to harvests. With plenty of likes I can usually get two crops a week to elder harvest. Those “liked” plants create a dilemma, though. They often are plants with shorter progress times so if too many likes are around them they get to elder harvest long before the plants they’re supporting.

I always have a few plants in the garden that are there just because some other plant likes each one. For instance, a Snap Dragon and a Tiger Lily always accompany my Pink Dandelions. A Boom Shroom is always near Evil Magma Peas. A Fickle Pickle accompanies a patch of Ivy Leagues.

Pink Dandelions like Snap Dragons. They also like pixies. While Snap Dragons occasionally get a pixie, Tiger Lilies get one more often. Snap Dragons and Tiger Lilies have somewhat shorter harvest times than Pink Dandelions. I often have to plant a second round of SDs or TLs while the initial crop of PDs is still progressing. So I try NOT to give them too many likes.

Since I have a Tropical Garden Gnome in each garden as a like for my plants (don’t often grow the ones that don’t like Gnomes), the SDs and TLs get that. And they like those pixies they attract. Snap Dragons also like PDs. And the TLs like everything that PDs like (Blue Ball of Yarn, Potted Cattail), so they have an unfortunate tendency to get to elder harvest way too fast.

Boom Shrooms, on the other hand, don’t like anything Evil Magma Peas like nor the EMPs. I provide nothing to speed them along except the garden gnome (and for the wizards who have it, Red Barn Farm). They still get to elder harvest before the EMPs. If I gave them any likes I think I’d have to plant three rounds for each round of EMPs.

I’m even starting to wonder if it would be a good idea to put in some “disliked” items for the “liked” plants to slow them down???

With this post I’m launching a series that will have its own page– “Quirky Mysteries of the Spiral,”–as well as being part of the regular posts. The more I play the game the more I find quirky things that don’t seem to make sense. I have a notion that in something this complex glitches probably account for a lot. Whatever the causes, I’ll be bringing up things I find mysterious.

I recently started a second account so I could start new wizards and see what happens when you know what I now know and when you start pets and gardening from the earliest possible moment . All my wizards on the first account were farther along when I got into those areas.

Since I had a wizard in Dragonspyre by the time I started serious gardening, I was able to get Potted Cattails (Pink Dandelion like) for all my wizards and to craft sandwich stations (Couch Potatoes like)and then Star Chalices (King Parsley like). These are items that are pretty much not available in the Bazaar. Even with plants like Pink Dandelions and Couch Potatoes that use low level gardening spells, lower level wizards have no way to optimize their growth with the best plant likes. They don’t have access to the areas in which some items are dropped and they aren’t high enough level in crafting to be allowed to craft the craft-able items.

Fairly low level wizards (below 30) can get PDs and CPs in drops in Krokotopia and the early stages of Grizzleheim. And those two can be cared for easily within the spells available through Krokotopia–if you didn’t want to use medium area spells to grow more of them, you can care for them off the Wizard City spells. So why give those plants a bunch of likes that lower level wizards can’t get? Even the Ball of Blue Yarn for PDs is a Marleybone drop though it at least shows up in the Bazaar fairly often.

If you run searches on Potted Cattails you’ll see a lot of posts about getting them at the Bazaar — check out the date on those because I’ve gathered from research and from chatting with long-time members they were easy to buy there in the past but no longer. I’ve spent eons at the Bazaar at every conceivable time of day over months and I’ve gotten two there. I had to fight Oakheart (Mooshu) a couple hundred times to get Potted Cattails for six wizards. See previous post about Potted Cattails.

My Pink Dandelions on the second account are progressing SO much more slowly than the speed to which I’m accustomed. I wound up having my highest level wizard fight Oakheart for hours and craft some recipes several times in order to sell them at the Bazaar while also logged into my second account so the lower level wizards on the newer account could get some plant likes and speed up the harvests.

What I don’t get is why you would create plants that low level wizards are able to grow with their limited gardening spells and then create a bunch of likes for the plants that those wizards are unable to get.* Is it really just that they want you to have to become a member or drop a ton of crowns to get to the worlds where you can get the drops or the recipes? And leave you frustrated until you can get there?

*Those are just a couple of examples but it’s actually true with more plants.

I’ve been experimenting with growing two crops within a medium-spell area and possibilities for placing them so that likes can be picked up by both or so that each can have their own likes.

The picture above is an example of having two pretty much separate gardens. The wizard is a level 26 Necromancer. She’s a grandmaster Rank 11 gardener but she’s just at the last leg of Krokotopia so she doesn’t have any large spells. Her Life House has several terraced spaces in the yard and I played with setting up two gardens near one another but on different levels.

I wasn’t attempting to get them picking up the same likes. But to my surprise, when I placed a Tiger Lily about where the Snap Dragon is now, the front row of Evil Magma Peas picked up the TL’s pixie as a like. The bad news was the back row didn’t register it so they started growing at different speeds. Next time round I moved the TL to its current location and, amazingly all the EMPs as well as all the Pink Dandelions pick up the pixie.

I didn’t realize Snap Dragons can draw pixies so now I have the unfortunate situation that the SD has a pixie and the TL doesn’t so I’m back with EMP’s in the front row picking up the pixie but not those in the back row. Lesson learned: plants can pick up likes from farther away than you might think so put something like a gnome that you can move around easily (plants can ‘t move once you’ve put in a seed unless you dig it up) and check all the plants to see which ones are picking it up in which places.